


Truer Words Never Spoken

by puzzlingnerd57



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 3+1 Story, For real it's kinda scary, Gen, Introspection, Kinda depressing, Minor Spoilers, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Quotes that came true, References to Season 1, Temporary Character Death, They wish they had been wrong, based on a pinterest post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 03:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15597429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puzzlingnerd57/pseuds/puzzlingnerd57
Summary: Three times Sherlock and crew wished that statements weren't true, and one time they knew one was false.





	Truer Words Never Spoken

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing was inspired by a Pinterest post I saw. It put a bunch of Sherlock quotes on one side, and then the scene where the quote/statement came true on the other. It was kinda scary/depressing how many of them actually came true. It is a 3+1 story, with three statements that were proven true, and one that was proven false, so if you don't like that format, then you don't have to read.  
> Also, Sally Donovan is not completely evil. I didn't like her character too much, but I decided that I wanted to show a different side of her dislike, that is kinda founded in truth.

1.

She didn’t like him. No, she loathed him. Hated him in fact. It wasn’t solely her fault either. Somedays it felt like he went out of his way to be irritating and nosy. Spouting out facts about people’s personal lives, things they kept hidden for a reason. She hated him and his so-called deductions.

It wasn’t just his deductions though. It was his attitude. From the very beginning, she knew there was something off about him. No one gets so excited about a crime scene unless something’s wrong with them. 

He gets off on it, she once claimed. It felt like she was the only one to understand that. She always saw the gleam that appeared in his eyes, the excited tension pulling his shoulders back and his chin up, and it scared her. 

A man like that, who can tell anyone about themselves and feels that much joy in the darkest deeds of man, is the one who would commit the crimes themselves. 

She had said as much to his companion, the short one who appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She had warned him two years ago, while they were looking for answers about the mysterious serial suicides.

However, as she stared at the scene before her, the yellow tape blocking off access to anyone not directly involved, as she watched his companion break down, as she took in the blood, the body, Sally Donovan wished she had been wrong about Sherlock Holmes.

Why couldn’t she have been wrong?

_“One day, we’ll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that put it there.”_

2.

Those words echoed through the deepest parts of his mind as he stared at the man behind the web. The man who he had chased for so long, given up so much for smirked at him and continued to speak, a one-sided conversation that sent ice through his veins. Threats, so many cruel threats. Things that had never crossed his mind as possibilities. 

He knew there was a web of criminals, he knew what he had to do. But oh, how those threats flung him back in time, to two years in the past, a similar conversation, a similar message.

He wasn’t on the roof, but in a classroom at night. The room, despite it being well lit, feels dark, ominous, as though it knows what’s about to happen, who occupies it after hours. The lighting brings every line, every detail into sharp focus.

Two innocuous bottles, each containing a single cylindrical tube. One good, one bad. He wasn’t being forced to choose. No, no force was involved. He had made the choice himself. He was so confident in himself, that he was blinded by his own arrogance. It pained him to realize that he had placed himself exactly where this man had forced him to be.

He knew that what he was doing now was just as much a chess match as that fateful night, a few years ago. He knew that he was going to have to fall. He didn’t realize until that moment though, just how much he had to lose, how much he had been played.

Looking back on it now, Sherlock loathed to admit it, but Jeff Hope had been right. Wrong speaker, perhaps, but he had been the one to give him the name in the first place. He had been outsmarted, out maneuvered, by a dead man. He wished the cabbie had been lying.

_“I’m going to talk to you, then you’re going to kill yourself.”_

3.

It had been a question. A very loaded question, one with so many possible answers, both deep and shallow, but a question none the less. It had been asked in the heat of the moment, in the midst of an important investigation, with pieces that didn’t quite add up.

It had been a thoughtless question, one that tied a few threads together in his mind, but still thoughtless in its verbalization. Death is, after all, a subject that not many want to imagine, let alone think about what their final moments would be like.

He had answered, only to be rebuked, told that it wasn’t imaginative. He had answered honestly though, admitting in his next breath that he didn’t have to be imaginative. He had been shamefully pleased at the guilty silence that echoed for a split second after his statement. Anything to stop the vitriol pouring from the genius’s mouth.

He knew his answer had lingered with the genius, those deductions about his military background spinning together with brutal clarity, leaving a shocking image behind.

He secretly pondered what the genius had been expecting in that moment, what kind of response he had anticipated. He, in the darkest parts of his mind, wondered what other people would have said.

Now, phone dangling from his limp hand, staring up at Sherlock Holmes on the roof’s edge, John Watson wished he didn’t know the answer Sherlock gave to the question asked two years ago, on their first case together.

_“If you were dying, if you were being murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?”_

+1.

It was over. The tangled criminal web was gone. He was finally home. Two years had passed since the fateful day when his life had sharply changed from the vivid colors and shockingly bright emotions to the beige and gray apathy that had been his existence two years before that. Suddenly that sharpness, that vivid life had returned and left him speechless. 

He took in his friend’s form as he sat in his usual chair. The thin form had become even thinner, cheekbones sticking out like knifes out of his drawn face. The years hadn’t been kind to the genius, that much was obvious.

They had been sitting in silence for some time, only broken by the sounds of tea being made and drank, and the light hum of London below. It was tense, but comfortable, the tension existing solely from worried anticipation, the comfort from being back in a familiar setting.

When his companion opened his mouth and words began spilling out, he knew that his friend had been wrong. As tales of espionage, danger and action tumbled out in a frenzy, he knew that his friend would deny it forever. 

The words died down leaving them in silence once more, the saga finished. He could see the genius trembling in his seat, waiting for a reaction, but silently leaving him to his thoughts. All the stories spun through his head, reinforcing the thought that had appeared the second it had begun.

His friend, for all his genius and deductions had been wrong. His companion, who brought him back to life, had risked his own life doing what he thought was right. 

Sherlock Holmes could deny it all he wanted, but John Watson knew the truth. Sherlock, the brave, smart man who was willing to give up everything to save his friends, was a hero. Sherlock had been wrong, and John was willing to spend the rest of his life proving it.

_“Heroes don’t exist, and if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.”_


End file.
